


Vae Victis

by Muffinworry



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:54:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28075014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muffinworry/pseuds/Muffinworry
Summary: He offers her a draw. Already knows her answer.
Relationships: Vasily Borgov & Beth Harmon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	Vae Victis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pinkcupboardwitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkcupboardwitch/gifts).



He doesn’t watch the board. He watches her instead. He watches her, his face trained to immobility, while he sees, oh he sees.

He offers her a draw. Already knows her answer.

Twenty minutes after the last flashbulb has gone off. The press will reluctantly let them leave for their rooms, the autograph hunters following her. Borgov will be mercifully alone. For the first time in years, nobody is interested in his whereabouts, He’ll order beer and cold water and have it brought down to the tiny sauna in the hotel, and feel his jaw start to unclench. He is sure – and Borgov is a man used to being sure of himself – that if he were to take the elevator to the sixth floor and knock on her door, she’d be there. On her own, like him, despite the thronging crowds and luscious invitations. He’s fairly sure she’d let him in. He might just be the only soul in Moscow who knows what she’s feeling right now.

He strips off and stretches, cracking his neck first to one side, then the other. By the time the sauna is properly hot, he’s two beers down and his mind is still racing. He pours cold water onto a towel, wrings it out and drapes it over his head, then steps into blistering heat. Immediately he is forced to calm his breathing. Borgov sits, leaning his forearms on his knees.

He’d offered her a draw. He doesn’t _do_ that.

He’s seen icons of the Virgin with hair that shade of red.

He steeples his long fingers together like he’s contemplating his next move, which is, in fact, what he’s doing. The air shimmers with heat. He stares at the burnished cedar walls and _sees_.

There is a future where he stands up, showers, goes back to his room. Has dinner with his wife. Takes the phone calls and interviews in the morning. Explains the game over and over to the serious men who follow him, and who need to know just how badly the State was beaten by America.

America, he thinks wryly, isn’t remotely prepared for her. And Harmon – sudden pity now - she has no idea how her life is about to change. She’ll need help.

Or maybe she won’t. She’d seen through him, after all.

Borgov is sweating, fists clenched. He stands, wincing at the heat of the floor, and pads out to the showers, where he stands under water so cold it feels like needles. He exhales hard, snorting like a bull. Tosses back another beer, then returns to warm up again. He’ll repeat this several times, until he feels clean.

It could take a long time.

The hell of being good at chess, really good, is that you get used to thinking far ahead. It unmoors you in time until the only thing you can be certain of is the board in front of you. And the reason Borgov needs to be alone right now, needs the punishing heat and the shocking cold, is because he knows what he saw in Harmon’s eyes.

There’s another future, one where he goes to a different hotel room. To a different woman. And he can’t see how that future ends, and it’s killing him.

His mind’s eye gazes over flaming hair and smooth white skin. Eyes too big for her haunted, heart-shaped face. A firm mouth, the stubbornness of a saint. He sees stolen kisses, guilty meetings. Rumpled sheets and silent regrets. There’s still so much he could teach her. A woman who throws everything she is into the game. It occurs to him, suddenly, that he’s only seen her smile the once. A thought like that could break your heart.

Borgov swears under his breath.

He takes the wooden ladle and tosses water over the glowing coals, until the steam rises thick, and he can’t see that future anymore.


End file.
